Butterfly Pea Flower Tea

A couple of months ago, Apothecary Mary posted about butterfly pea flower tea. It looked delicious and its unusual blue hue was intriguing. A few months later, we ordered the Forgotten Home Apothecary. It includes a recipe for an anti-inflammatory tea that uses butterfly pea flowers. This prompted us to order some dried butterfly pea flowers to add to our tea repertoire. Inflammation is such a widespread health issue that it never hurts to have several options for combating it and the damage it causes. 

Note: This blog post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an affiliate we may earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Our first exposure to butterfly pea flowers was with Empress Gin - a beautiful, purple gin with distinctive floral notes. During one of The Racketeer's (a local swanky cigar and whisky lounge) sushi night events, we were served a mixed drink that had Empress Gin in it. It had a refreshing and light floral note that was perfect for a warm summer evening.

After doing some reading, we found that butterfly pea flowers have many benefits above and beyond fighting inflammation. They are rich in antioxidants, some studies suggest they may support blood sugar regulation, and other studies suggest they may aid in weight loss. (1) These beautiful little flowers are also said to support cognitive function and be good for hair and skin health. (2)

We ordered our flowers from Azure Standard. They came as dried whole flowers. 

Dried butterfly pea flowers

You can chop or grind them into smaller pieces, which is what most people typically do with herbs. The idea is that this gives you more surface area from which to extract the benefits of the plant. We chose to leave them whole when tried them in tea for the first time. We combined them with dried rose petals and dried rose hips for an afternoon floral tea.

Prepping the tea

It makes a pretty blue tea. The flavor has floral notes that become more earthy the longer it steeps. 

Butterfly pea flower/rose/rose hip tea

I imagine this will be a good tea to drink cold in the summertime as well. We will definitely be keeping these in our tea supply. 


(1)  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/butterfly-pea-flower-benefits

(2) https://teasetea.com/en-us/blogs/lifestyle/the-benefits-of-butterfly-pea-flower-nature-s-blue-wonder


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garden Update - Late Spring 2025

Outdoor Garden We set up the last garden bed that we didn't get to last summer. We purchased our third two-pack of the 6x3 beds last year and only set one of them up. I prepped the bed with cardboard and threw in some limbs, leaves, and grass clippings. I then topped it off with soil. We also did a bit of planting. Our larger bed has mint and tarragon on one side. They are healthy plants and come back every year, so I like to leave them alone. We planted a few flower seeds in the bare spots on this side. We planted dry beans on the other side using beans I had saved from a previous garden. The seeds are a couple of years old, so if they do not come up within a reasonable time, I will re-plant with newer seed. We also planted two of the shorter beds. This gives us four beds that are ready to go for the season: one of strawberries, two we just planted, and one with tarragon and mint on one side and the beans we just planted on the other. We will plant the remaining beds when the weat...
Read more

Garden Update - Summer 2025

Image
I love to garden. I don't always have the greatest success with it, but I do enjoy it. Here are the highlights (including both successes and failures) of our little garden. Plum Tree  After four years of wondering what the little thorny tree growing at the edge of the yard might be, we finally found out this year. It turns out it is some kind of plum, likely a cherry plum, but I am not sure. It finally produced fruit this year - tiny, yellow plums that have a sweet-tart flavor. Peppers  I planted peppers indoors this year from seed I saved from last year. Sadly, none of it germinated. We ended up ordering our peppers from Azure Standard this year. Their supplier offers heirloom varieties at better prices than the non-heirloom plants we found at Lowes. This year we put in three jalapeno and two Anaheim plants. They did not grow very tall (we have issues getting anything to grow big here), but they are producing very well!   White Beans  I saved seeds from our in-groun...
Read more

Homemade Dishwasher Soap - Recipe Review #2

Last week we posted a review of the first homemade dishwasher detergent we made. This week, we are posting a review of the second recipe we tried. We found this recipe on The Provident Prepper channel on YouTube. Homemade Dishwasher Detergent #2 Ingredients : 1 c. washing soda ¼ c. food grade citric acid ¼ c. sea salt 20 drops lemon essential oil Directions :  Mix ingredients well. Be sure to break up any clumps. Store in a glass jar. Use 1 t. per load or 1 ½ t. per greasy load. What we liked The dishes were sparkling clean!  The recipe is simple. The ingredients are non-toxic. There was no detergent taste left on the dishes. What we didn't like Citric acid isn't something we usually keep on hand (this will likely change given how well this recipe works). Overall review This recipe was fabulous ! The dishes came out so clean (no streaks, no foggy glassware) and it only takes one teaspoon per load. It is actually such a great recipe and worked so well that I don't ...
Read more